FLUX @fluxteamproject-blog - Tumblr Blog

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Our team photos are complete! Photos were shot by Solomon Mercurio, Jhade Benitez, and Marcus Rose in the RIT photo studios.

11 days until Imagine RIT!

#wearemodels #weareFLUX ImagineRIT

Flux Website More Progress

As our website design is being refined, web development is rolling. This is what part of our site currently looks like live in the browser.

For those of you who are curious developers, we use the Toast CSS Grid. All the CSS math has been calculated for you and all you have to do is assign classes.

Our site is set to be completed soon so look out for that!

Flux Website in Progress

As the development of the game has been coming along swimmingly design on the Flux website has started. The website will be shown at Imagine RIT but also live on in the future. The site will include an explanation of gameplay as well as other aspects of the app such as educational interactive cards. Players will receive interactive cards, after competing in games, that will provide exercise and health facts. There will also be an about page that dives deeper into the motives for the creation of Flux as well as the important takeaways of the game.

Shown above is a sneak peak of one of the preliminary design mockups for the website. Stay tuned for more!

Developing Flux in Unity has been going well. We have finished the different game states with the following game screens; title, pause, and results.

The flow goes like this, the user opens the app and is brought to the title screen. There is a button that starts the game. Once the user starts the game, they need to start running in place to move forward. if the user stops for more than 3 seconds, the game automatically goes to the pause screen. From the pause screen, the user can choose to resume playing the game or quit/finish the game. If the user chooses the later, they are brought to the results screen. The results screen will show how long they have run and other recorded data (not too sure yet about what will be on the results screen, we need more discussion about this.) The results screen will have a button for the user to play the game again which will bring them back to the title screen.

In the video, the different game screens are not final. They are just mock-ups/placeholders. This is just a demo of the game state flow.

Designing for Target Audiences

Flux is moving ahead with design solely in Unity now. Our main environment is the teal, blue and orange-red space for our target audience of young millennials. We are experimenting with colors and textures to create environments that can better target a specific audience. For example, the pink and blue world may be much more appealing to a little girl than our main environment. These explorations are still in production and we plan to have some test subjects in the near future to find the best design directions.

#unity 3D mobilegaming color design

Accessory Device Update

We are creating a device to insert a phone, which will be used while playing the game. Here is our first version of the handset.

Wireframe Process

Happy Tuesday Everyone!

Here we are week 7 already, this semester is flying by. Last week leading into this week half the team has been making great progress with building the game environment in unity and hashing out how all the in game movements are going to be executed.

The other half of the team has been working on wireframes and focusing on the design of the games UI elements. We broke down what game play screens would be needed and divided those out between the designers to each start exploring different directions. After meeting last Sunday we brought all the wireframes together and started finalizing the direction of the UI elements. Now it’s time to start bringing those assets into unity!

UI elements exploration

Coming Together

Only after a couple of weeks of coding Visual Studio, testing character movement, jumping, and rotation in Unity, and creating the environment in Cinema, the Flux team is starting to put everything together.

Currently, Megan is working on putting the scene together in Unity. Riley has been creating 3D assets in Cinema to be imported into Unity. Amy has been working on using Perlin noise to animate the environment.

There were some hiccups the team found. One of these is the fact that when the code detects linear acceleration, it can’t detect the direction of the acceleration. This means you can shake the phone in a downwards or sideways direction to make the player in the game jump. As a result of this problem, ducking has become an impossible action in the game; we already have the linear acceleration detection to make the player in the game to jump.

Another issue that we are starting to have is running the game without very much lag. Lag happens when the game/scene has to render a lot on screen. This also includes animations. Developers are now thinking of ways to reduce this lag. One idea is only giving animations to the hills really close to the running path. Another idea is to make the running map into separated tiles so that when the player enters the next running tile, we can hide the old tile to reduce the lag in game.

The next few milestones on the development side are collision detection for objects the player in the game has to interact with and creating invisible walls so that the player does not stray far from the running path.

Color Exploration

Design Direction

After doing our research on games and environments, Flux has finally settled on a design direction that is currently being built in Unity. We decided to go with a complimentary color palette in a peaceful, mountain-ness world that users will run through and jump over evolving bumps from the floor.

Designers are split up into two teams at the moment to tackle both game UI and game environment. We will be pushing UI elements into Unity this upcoming week while continuing to texturize our environment.

#unity 3d design sketches

Development Update

Here we are, WEEK 5! Time is flying by for all of us, and FLUX is moving along on schedule. Our developers Megan & Amy have been working hard to learn the functionality of the accelerometer of an android mobile device built in Unity. So far we have jumping, running, and camera rotation working on a mobile device. We are still working on dodging and ducking. Megan has created a guide for the designers to follow to help them learn how to use unity and get an application running on an android device. This will be super helpful, as all the designers are currently exploring what the best way to export 3D assets and environment models is, into Unity. Happy Thursday Everyone!

-FLUX

#unity development research endless runner rit nmd

Freerunning

It’s been a busy week for ye olde’ Mean Machine Team! After getting final approval and checking all of the boxes on our itinerary for Overlord Adam Smith (and Sten), we quickly dove into researching existing game environments contained within the endless runner genre that were available to download from the Google Play store.

There are an endless amount of games available, but a handful of them stood out for their gameplay and unique art-style(s)..

Tunnel Rush II - Tunnel Rush II is a unique endless runner due to the fact that it takes place in a large winding tunnel that grants the player the ability to move in a full 360 degree angle to avoid obstacles in their path.

SmashHit - For the most part, SmashHit is an endless runner. It’s also a type of shoot-out game similar to the ones you would find at the sketchy carnival that setup shop a few miles outside of your town. It also sports a minimalist (sterile), polygon based art-style.

Rolly Vortex - It was hard to find this one, as there are a plethora of bootleg versions of this game. Rolly Vortex is similar to Tunnel Rush, it also grants the player the ability to navigate a full 360 degrees to avoid incoming obstacles, but instead of tapping to change directions, the player must hold and slide their thumb left to right to move their rolling ball. The art style is a hybrid of SmashHit and Tunnel Rush II.

Rush - Not the rockband from the late 1960s, but instead a visually striking and nail-bitingly difficult endless runner that goes from 0 to 100 right out of the gate. Bright neon colors that quickly shift as the players advance amp up the tension as more and more obstacles pop on the unpredictable track.

Researching these environments have enabled us to create a functional prototype of our pitched idea that will soon be sculpted into our own unique vision for a barn burner debut at Imagine RIT 2018

- Jack

#unity #development #research #endless #runner #rit #nmd

Design Update

This past week our design team has been working on solidifying the design direction and environment of the game. We first compared mood boards to come up with a unified style. We then conceptualized mockups of the direction we wanted to go in for the game environment. After comparing mockups we are working towards finalizing the design direction. During the past 2 weeks our designers have also been working on the game user flows, which has allowed us to then start working on creating basic wireframes.

Meanwhile our developers have been exploring using accelerometers on a mobile phone built with unity. As well as getting movement detection for running and jumping, which will be important aspects to the game play. Last but not least, our industrial designer has been working on concept sketches of the handset that will be used to hold the mobile device.

Meet the Team

We are Flux! A dynamic team of four New Media Designers (Riley, Solomon, Melissa and Jack), one New Media Developer (Megan), one hybrid Designer/Developer (Amy), and one Industrial Designer (Riki). Our combined talents form an innovative and creative team.

What is Flux you ask?

Flux is a mobile app that uses full body movement to control the game. Research led us to learn young Millennials spend an average of 223 minutes on their phones a day. Although 22 minutes of physical activity a day is required for a healthy lifestyle, only 50% of individuals actually hit the minimum requirement. So we created a way to incorporate full body movement into gaming!

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